Veracode’s latest State of Software Security (SoSS) report reveals concerning trends in software security vulnerabilities. The average time to fix these vulnerabilities has significantly increased, rising to eight and a half months, which marks a 47% rise over the past five years. This is a drastic change compared to 15 years ago, where the fix time was 327% lower. The report attributes much of this delay to the growing dependence on third-party code and the rise of AI-generated code, which have made software ecosystems more complex and difficult to secure.
A significant portion of the security challenges organizations face is the accumulation of critical security debt.
The report indicates that 50% of all organizations have vulnerabilities that have been left unresolved for over a year, with critical vulnerabilities accounting for 70% of this debt. These critical flaws often come from third-party code, highlighting the risk associated with software supply chains. Despite efforts to improve security, the prevalence of security debt remains high, with 74.2% of organizations facing some form of security debt, ranging from high-severity flaws to more minor issues.
The analysis also highlights stark differences in how various organizations manage security flaws.
The top 25% of organizations are able to fix more than 10% of their software flaws every month, whereas the bottom 25% address less than 1%. The report also points out that the most mature organizations have security debt in only 17% of their applications, while the least mature organizations carry this burden in over 67% of their applications. This disparity shows the varying levels of maturity in handling vulnerabilities across the industry.
Despite these alarming figures, there are some positive trends. The number of applications free from flaws listed in the OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities has increased by 63% over the past five years. Furthermore, the prevalence of high-severity flaws has been halved since 2016, demonstrating gradual improvements in security practices. However, with over half of applications still containing critical vulnerabilities, there is clearly much work to be done to address the growing security challenges in today’s software environments.
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